A scholar's parrot

This past Sunday, Sloan and I spoke in a Sunday School class about the Orphan Care ministry at our church.  And like most times I speak about how God has worked in my life, it ends up different than I expect.  Invariably, I expect to really bless people.  I expect to go in and cause tears and have people stand up and shout, “Blessed are you amongst women!  Hallelujah!”

Ahem.

This has yet to happen.  Instead, what usually happens is I cry, Sloan says a few things and then people end up blessing me. 

This Sunday was no different. 

Sloan and I spoke at the beginning of the class and then stayed for the lesson.  

They were first discussing what is our primary question we all have for God.  And we all pretty much agreed that is was simple—we want help.  We want to be fixed.  We want all of our suffering to stop. 

Then we went to Scripture and read from Mark 9:14-17.  This would be the section of your Bible probably titled “Jesus Heals a Boy with an Unclean Spirit”.   

To paraphrase…Jesus and some of his disciples have just been on a mountain and done the whole transfiguration thing.  Then they rejoin the disciples and there is a crowd.  The disciples have been trying to heal a boy to no avail.  So there is some arguing about their legitimacy and power.  And then there’s the Dad of the boy, probably wishing everyone would stop pushing in and just let him get his boy some help.  Jesus swoops in and says “How long am I to bear with you?  Bring him to me” and finds that the boy is mute and has what we would probably diagnose as epilepsy.  He’s always had it and it has caused him other injuries.  And then the Dad says, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us!”  And I love this part…Jesus says “IF?  All things are possible for the one who believes.”  And then we have what is easily my most favorite prayer in the Bible “Lord!  I believe!  Help my unbelief!” So Jesus speaks to the unclean Spirit and heals the boy.  But to be sure, at first everyone thinks that the boy is dead.  The healing looks like death.  Seriously, Scripture says the boy looks like a corpse.  But then Jesus takes the boy’s hand and helps him up.

I think in the past I thought the whole “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” prayer just sort of hung out on its own in Scripture.  I never saw that it was the beleaguered prayer of a Special Needs Dad.  This broke me.

It also broke me that what Jesus considers healing may look like death to me.  Frankly, I don’t really like that.  But there ya go.  That’s Easter.  There can be no Jesus taking my hand and helping me rise if at first things don’t die.  There’s no getting to Easter morning if we don’t walk through the agony of the cross.

And there is the dang rub.  I just want a basket of peeps, peeps.  Not the agony. 

And then, because the Sunday School teacher really wanted to hone in on my own self-worship and unbelief and the fact that what I really want God to be is a Grandpa who gives me everything I want—he gave us the following poem to discuss in small groups:

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;

I talk of love—a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek—

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

-C.S. Lewis

Father God, I believe!  Help my unbelief.  Break me free from my prison of self.  I confess I desire the world to revolve around me: Such a short orbit.  Enter in.  Call out my unclean spirit.  And just when I’m certain that I am dead, take my hand again and tell me to rise.